Artist Q&A | Dripping Dimes

Posted on February 16, 2015 by Stickerbomb Staff

You might have recently noticed some sick detailed stickers causing a wave in the Stickerbomb store. Dripping Dimes, the creative twosome behind the genius tell us more about what gets them ticking, their styles, dynamics and how one of them has a receding hairline...

Give us a brief introduction of yourselves.

We are Dripping Dimes, a creative duo hailing from Sydney, Australia. We create unique objects including sticker packs, tshirts and artist prints.

Dripping Dimes consists of Isaac Toth (Clubbed Thumbs) who illustrates our designs and Zac Farrell who is the photographer and guy who gets shit done.

Both of us work on creative direction and branding for all of our products and photoshoots. In saying that we pretty much work together across all those facets picking up on anything the other has missed.

When did you start illustrating?

Clubbed Thumbs (CT):

As a kid I loved copying the designs from my toy packaging of transformers and my sega games, and would do this regularly but as I got older I drew less and less.

When I left high school I got a job at a magazine doing photo retouching and concentrated a lot on the digital side of things.

More recently in the last couple of years with a bit of a push from the people close to me I have heavily gotten back into drawing and been inspired to create things.

Tell us more about your style

ZAC FARRELL (ZF):

I tend to gravitate towards large format, sharp imagery, mostly created in studio with lighting. I'm inspired by weird imagery although I like to create as much as I can in camera rather than adding elements in post production to keep it natural. I'm influenced by Maurizio Cattelan, Pierpaolo Ferrari, Gregory Crewdson, Miles Aldridge and Stephen Shore. I tend to use a lot of grids and on camera filters to create sharp and detailed images. Colour balance is very important also, it can be the make or break of an image for me.

CT:

In regards to illustration and subject matter I guess I love to draw things I want to see that I can’t just find a photo of.

For me I think the stranger the better, thats what keeps me interested, something a little unsettling but light hearted at the same time, a juxtaposition of subjects you wouldn’t usually see together, detailed, often colourful and (hopefully) instantly recognisable.

I guess you would call my work lowbrow as I delve into the more grotesque side of things, I’m easily amused by that kind of stuff.

What inspires you?

We are inspired by things we see that are slightly on the odd side. A lot of our inspiration comes from skateboard culture, graffiti, anatomy, old ads mainly pre 90’s, vintage toy packaging, stickers, and video games from our childhood play a part in our products. We love the nostalgia of these things from our childhood.

We are very big on finer details, we put as much time into our packaging and photo shoots as we put into the designs that go on our stickers and t-shirts.

The fact that we have a photographic studio allows us to get creative with our product shoots and catalogues.

What are your future plans?

We have a range of t-shirts launching in the next couple of months. Two of the designs have already been screen printed but we are still playing around with little details in regards to the packaging, as stated before we tend to spend a lot of time on little things but we believe these things add up; people notice.

As well as expanding our initial offering of products we also plan on working with people/businesses who inspire us and who share our interests and vision.

Anything exciting happened in your life recently that you’d like to share?

2014 was a big year for us, working hard to get Dripping Dimes up and running took time, but its been fun trying things we hadn’t ever tried before. The reward has been seeing the objects we have designed come to life andreceiving so much positive feedback along the way.

Tell us some fun facts about yourself

We went to the same high school but never spoke to each other.

We both like breaking redundant objects left on the streets in cleanups, especially electrical objects. Our favourite shows are Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job! and Peep Show.

Zac has a beard, a rapidly receding hairline, has a massive sweet tooth and rides a Harley Davidson (without a gang)

Isaac has clubbed thumbs, a great eye for antiques and can’t grow a beard.